Pope sparks row with Turkey by calling Armenian massacre genocide

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis sparked a diplomatic row on Sunday by calling the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians 100 years ago "the first genocide of the 20th century," prompting Turkey to accuse him of inciting hatred.

Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians died in clashes with Ottoman soldiers beginning in 1915, when Armenia was part of the empire ruled from Istanbul, but denies hundreds of thousands were killed and that this amounted to genocide.

At an Armenian rite Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to mark the 100th anniversary of the mass killings, Francis became the first head of the Roman Catholic Church to publicly pronounce the word "genocide" to describe them.

Some European and South American countries use the term to describe the killings, but the United States and some others, keen to maintain good relations with an important ally, avoid doing so.

Turkey was swift to protest. "The pope's statements, which are far from historical and judicial facts, cannot be accepted," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on his Twitter account.

"Religious offices are not places to incite hatred and revenge with baseless accusations," he said.

The foreign ministry called its ambassador to the Holy See back to Ankara, and summoned the Vatican's ambassador, saying Francis' remarks had caused a "problem of trust" in diplomatic relations.

Pope John Paul II and Armenian Apostolic Church Supreme Patriarch Kerekin II called the massacre "the first genocide of the 20th century" in 2001, but that was in a joint written statement.
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